FUNREMARKABLE.
Rebooting Saints Row wasn’t going to be an easy task in these modern times. This was a franchise that often changed its identity as it continued to grow into a beloved franchise. What started out as a competitor in the GTA space grew into something a bit more crazy, a bit more out there, and a bit more silly. Still, it was a franchise I adored, and while I personally feel that Saints Row 2 and 3 are the best the series has ever been, this latest reboot does a decent job at returning to those roots, but in the end, it feels largely half-baked and incredibly unpolished.
When the game gave me a prompt that I was about to start the final set of missions, I was actually shocked. Considering the fact that I had plenty of plot threads still unresolved and completely unsatisfied endings to how I dealt with the rival gangs, I was expecting the story to shift into high gear and attempt to really do something with what it had been building to. I mean, I know that the Saints Row games have never really been about their narrative, but for a moment there, I was rather hopeful.
Saints Row starts with an interesting idea. You play a custom character who has three roommates and when your main source of income gets cut off, you all decided to jump into a life of crime. It’s a solid premise that had potential, but after a few blink and you miss it missions, you suddenly have a gang, a hideout, and a name; The Saints. While I ended up really enjoying the main cast, it was only when the game was about to wrap up that it simply left me wanting more. I think the biggest issue here is that the group is already established at the start of the game, which leaves us, the player, on the outside of an already cemented friendship. We didn’t get introduced to them, we didn’t see those friendships form, and honestly, that was something that I really enjoyed about the previous crew. The game also has a “tell, don’t show” approach to their backstories, as while Neenah and Kevin are members of two of the other gangs, the connections they have to them are over and done with in a bizarre fashion, as if the developer had no intention of fleshing them out.
It’s also bizarre how fast you deal with your competition. While we see the leaders of the Idols and the Los Panteros in a mission here and there and have some brief interactions with them, they feel largely wasted and barely characters for how much the game used them. For a game that is literally built off of gang turf war, I am surprised at how little the Idols and Los Panteros actually factor into any aspect of this game other than simply being fodder for your activities and the missions that involve them. You also have the Marshalls, the military-type law enforcers, who do feature here considerably more but don’t feel as fleshed out as they could have been.
That aside, Saints Row is also remarkably unpolished and filled with a slew of technical issues. It’s not the most broken game I have ever played by any means, but I had missions break to the point of having to restart them countless times to several cutscenes where my character was entirely invisible. This is on top of countless lighting issues, excessive pop-in, bizarre traffic behavior, and numerous visual bugs. While the game is continuing to see patches and fixes, there are countless reports of save files simply disappearing or being corrupted to the point of being completely unusable. I almost panicked as I experienced some pretty harsh crashes and bugs during the final mission, technical issues similar to what other people experienced before their save files were rendered useless.
While the bulk of this game was developed during the pandemic, the title should have seen a delay to address these issues as there can’t of been a situation where the publisher was not aware of them. I also found it rather odd that while the game was the full $79.99cad on the Xbox Canadian store, and the PlayStation one for that matter, that my local Wal-Mart had physical copies for $59.99cad. Needless to say, I went physical with this one. Had the title been the cheaper price across all platforms and territories, then I think a lot of the negative conversation surrounding this game would have been lessened greatly, or even if the title had appeared on Game Pass or the various PS Plus tiers.
Saints Row takes place in Santo Ileso, a fictional city that is loosely based on Las Vegas. It’s a really nice look for what the game is trying to achieve and is actually pretty damn fun to navigate. While there is a wingsuit to glide over a decent amount of the city, the Saints Row games have always lent themselves to being fun sandbox worlds where driving has consistently been a huge part of the experience. While I am not sold on only having one camera setting for driving, or the way the camera spins around when you reverse, driving is just as fun here as it has ever been. Cars handle rather decently and have a few new tricks to master as well. You can side-tackle cars ala Wheelman, as well as a solid drifting mechanic that makes cornering a breeze. While there are fast travel points you can unlock by taking pictures of nearby landmarks, I rarely used them due to how satisfying the driving actually is and how manageable Santo Ileso is to navigate.
The city is split into various districts that you will attempt to take over piece by piece. As you progress throughout the game, you’ll gain Criminal Ventures to place down across the city. This is how you will pull in the majority of your cash as completed ventures will net you an hourly cut of your earnings. The more ventures you have completed, the faster you will accumulate a vast wealth. While there are also an assortment of other objectives to take in within each district, they don't really seem to factor in if you can claim that area for your criminal empire. What is odd about how the city is flush with various gangs, is that they don’t really compete with you for territory, meaning your growth is never at risk or prevented, or at the very least, threatened.
These ventures range from having to recover a series of vehicles, play a game of I-Spy, pulling off a heist, to earning some cash as you jump into traffic via insurance fraud. For the most part, these are pretty fun and are the basis for the various activities that are littered around the city. I like this way of unlocking them because it keeps the map manageable as it requires you to complete those activities before you can jump into some of the main story missions, ensuring that you are actually completing them. It’s a good system that works as their success actually means something in the end.
Out of the more than a dozen ventures, Castle Kraken is leaps and bounds the best, and honestly, it is the best content this game has bar none. While there are some decent story missions that have you escaping a burning boat on a jet ski, or taking on a train heist, Castle Kraken has you doing something that hasn’t really been done in Saints Row before; Larping. I’ve seen a few outlets or random tweets claiming it’s a rip-off of Borderlands, and while that might be true in some respects, it still kicks ass nonetheless. From custom executions for the melee “kills” to some of the game’s best dialogue, “I said GOOD DAY!”, I was really taken aback by how much better these quests were written and structured than anything else in the game. There are not too many of these quests, but it brings together not just the whole gang, but another character who is part of the main plot in a way that felt extremely fitting.
This reboot taps into the open-world sandbox gameplay that feels pulled out of both Saints Row 2 and 3, relying on a collection of various weapons, vehicles, and various other systems that are used in nearly every activity or mission. In that sense, yes, nearly every activity is largely the same and each mission does simply have you driving somewhere and just killing things. Despite how mundane that sounds, that is what I expect from Saints Row and that is exactly what I got here. While I don’t feel the game goes to the same highs or pushes past the limits of previous entries, there are still a few stand-out moments that did validate how much fun I was having, but I'll admit, a lot of that fun came from the organic chaos within its sandbox and rarely from of any of its structured format.
Everything you do in the game is handled through your cell phone. You have a map that you can pull up to set objectives markers or use it to fast travel, even if I found it to be absolute nonsense that you cannot fast travel while starting up a mission, which instead forces you to drive to your location to simply start the mission or cancel the mission, fast travel, and then start it up again. From your cell phone, you can also change the appearance of your boss, and their clothing, or download any of the thousands of community-made bosses. While some developmental choices of the game may be questionable, the create a character here is downright impressive and allowed me to create my favorite boss yet in the series. The fact that you can just change anything about your boss on a whim is impressive.
While you can take pictures or selfies with your camera, some missions will also benefit from its use as well. Objects will dictate if you are too close or too far away or if you have the picture centered properly. As you build up your headquarters, you can also take pictures of particular objects out and about in the city and bring them to your base as a statue or work of art. It’s not a system that feels as fleshed out as I imagine they were shooting for, but it’s a nice touch regardless to customize your digs, even if I wish I could change the flooring, wallpaper, and overall layout to really make that space feel mine.
You also have a cash app that allows you to collect your earnings from your ventures, which for some reason, I was unaware of for quite some time and ended up collecting a very large payday that allowed me to dive into the car customization and really “trick” my car out as the kids say. There is a wanted app for tracking down some criminals for some cash, but the low reward amounts kept me largely away from them in favor of just earning that faster as I did many of the other activities. Still, it’s an interesting system that has you almost stalking or tracking down wanted fugitives and killing them for your client.
Apart from a contact list to call in some help from one of your friends, a collectibles list for what you can decorate your base with, or keeping track of all the licensed music in your playlist, you have two apps you will be using fairly regularly; Skills and Perks. Skills unlock as you level up, giving you access to grenades, proximity mines, temporary buffs, as well as a few gun-focused moves that are pretty fun to pull off. You can map them to the face buttons for quick use, but you’ll have to rely on a system called Flow in order to use them. Flow is essentially MP for your skills, earned as you unleash chaos that then in turn is used to continue that cycle of violence. Perks, however, are slotted items that grant you a variety of passive stats like moving faster while crouching or reducing the cooldown of your takedowns when you kick an enemy and then kill them. Some perks slots are locked, but as you buy additional slots, you can equip more to give you a bit of an edge.
Once you have your equipped skills and perks all in order, you’ll take to the streets to dish out Saints Justice. Now, at first, I wasn’t feeling the shooting. It felt floaty in some cases and felt as if there was just something odd about it. I tinkered with the variety of settings to find that sweet spot of making the snap aiming really do a lot of the heavy lifting. While this caused some awkward jumping around from target to target in ways that often left me open, due to swapping targets and moving the camera to both be mapped to the right analog stick, the majority of my time with those settings had me really enjoy the shooting, even if I feel it could have been better.
When it comes to your arsenal, you have the same assortment of guns you’ve seen before; melee, pistols, machine guns, rifles, shotguns, and rocket launchers, which do feel good to use, but there isn’t really anything too crazy to really add to your assortment. Saints Row has had a very well-known history of having very outlandish weaponry, but sadly, there are very few weapons that match that description apart from a few late-game additions or the small assortment of non-lethal dart guns used during the larping missions.
One area where Saints Row really excels is in its accessibility features, offering a wealth of settings to really allow anyone to jump right in. You can turn off quick time events or time limits for certain activities, to changing all your control settings, or what you can toggle on and off. There are numerous visual settings to make picking apart aspects of the game better for those that need it, to full color blind settings as well. While it is still a bit behind what Sony has been doing for the likes of The Last of Us, this is still no slouch for offering a wealth of important features that I would love to see as a standard across the industry.
While your mileage is going to vary on its soundtrack, featuring the likes of Busta Rhymes, Onyx, Naughty by Nature, and a wide assortment of others, there is a decent variety of radio stations to keep you at least partially entertained during your drives. Previous entries have had big moments backed by some recognizable tunes, and while “Party up” by DMX and “Sound of da Police” by KRS One are part of some pretty enjoyable missions, nothing here reaches the highs of the prior games by any stretch of the imagination.
Visually, Saints Row is a mixed bag, largely due to some constant lighting and shadow issues. I had countless moments where the inside of my hideout would sometimes be bright one moment and then display the correct lighting the next, only to step one foot to the left and it be bright again. This happened a lot. While characters look fine in cutscenes, their gameplay models are less impressive by a huge margin, and apart from a few of the extended cast, most models would feel right at home a generation or two ago. I do prefer the cartoony style of its design as it makes the violence not feel as brutal or realistic, but when my create a character boss looks infinitely better than any other model, you sort of have an issue.
As I mentioned previously, I think Santo Ileso looks great, with several nice looking areas and the striking appeal of a desert-like city. If it wasn't for the bland-looking mountains surrounding the city with blurry and disappointing textures, I'd certainly have better things to say. I do think the game looks fine and is aesthetically pleasing, but it looks like a game that has a significantly smaller budget than its competitors.
While enjoyed either solo or in co-op, Saints Row is still a pretty fun experience if you have your expectations set to have it be nothing more than a throwback to the previous games. It doesn’t look to modernize any aspect of its dated design, and while that is more or less what I wanted from it, I can see the argument that the series needed a bit more done here to have it really stand out. I enjoyed the cast that is here, even if I feel nothing was done to really make me that invested in them. I think the story and the way the game ends to be incredibly lacking and rushed at key moments when a slower burn and more depth to its villains would have greatly improved it. Regardless, I still enjoyed its sandbox nature, the ripping around in any number of the vehicles I had in my garage and causing untold destruction in ways that work within the confines of a Saints Row game.
Despite the vast technical issues and outdated presentation, I don’t think that this new version of Saints Row is bad in any real respect. There are things I am disappointed with sure, but there is a lot of fun to be had here regardless of those issues. I think once the technical problems are ironed out and if the game sees a sizeable price cut, then I would certainly recommend the game under those circumstances. As it stands right now; however, Saints Row is merely alright, and that’s about the worst thing I can say about it.
Developer - Volition. Publisher - Deep Silver. Released - August 23rd, 2022. Available On - Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4/PS5, PC, Stadia. Rated - (M) Blood, Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Drugs, Violence. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - Saints Row was purchased for review.